Friday, October 16, 2009

Zen and the art of motorbike ACC maintenance

Fair go for the motorcyclists getting pissed off at proposed ACC levy hikes. Motorbike owners with more than 600cc of grunt are staring at a crippling tripling of fees, from $252 to $735. Puny mopeds leap from $58 to $246.

The massive increases in levies for motorcycles seems grossly unfair to me, and smacks of National hitting a group of voters it doesn't think are likely to be National supporters. Sure, motorcycles are involved in more accidents, but how many of those were caused by car drivers?

I'd rather encourage more scooters and bikes onto the road and have fewer metal boxes. It's more fuel efficient and less parking space is required to stable them. More importantly, bike-bike accidents are less mortal than bike-car or car-pedestrian accidents. The more equal the vulnerability, the more respect you maintain with other road users.

But the proposed ACC charges turn all this on its head. A 3000cc big bastard boy racer car will cost only twice the fee of a puny 49cc roller skate. This is scapegoating pure and simple. The Nats deserve all the heat they're getting on the ACC mess.